Over the last 10 days, the Democratic and Republican conventions have inundated us with rivers of words and pictures. Some of the images stand out more than others and have already found an afterlife in GIFs and video clips.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump entering the stage, silhouetted in fog, a strong or menacing figure, depending on your politics; first lady Michelle Obama, radiant in blue and lit with passion and reason; Sen. Bernie Sanders, noble as he urged his followers to support Hillary Clinton as the Democratic presidential nominee.
Yet one image above all will stand in our memory for years to come: President Barack Obama, the first African-American to hold our nation’s highest office, embracing Clinton, the first woman to win a presidential nomination from a major party. They glow with joy and exultation as they face out to the cheering crowds.
It’s hard to overestimate the significance of this image of a black man and a woman together at the pinnacle of American politics. I remember the tears of happiness and amazement when Obama was elected. Many doubted this could happen in a country where the “echoes of Jim Crow” still resonate in the everyday lives of black Americans, as former Attorney General Eric Holder put it in his own convention speech. The right of African-Americans to vote at all was long contested, until the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Nor did it seem as though a woman could come so far. Women got the vote in 1920, but despite our country’s notable progress in shifting attitudes about gender, inequities still rule on and off the job. The military is out front in its laudable push for gender integration, but plenty of Americans share Trump’s feeling that he does not want to hear the term “Madame President” — not yet.
Images capture our history at a given moment and time, often telling us things that words cannot. Into this image of Obama and Clinton flow several streams of our national past. While a convention stage is a far different backdrop than reality on the street, the image made there marks a milestone in the ongoing struggle for civil and human rights. It also works as an emblem for our future, symbolizing the democratic commitment to inclusion and diversity. Our nation is changing demographically: Political parties can either resist that change, or channel its energies.
It also shows what Democrats are up against in this election. Hillary Clinton is not just a woman but also the wife of former President Bill Clinton, and as such represents to many Republicans larger issues: Her nomination signals a definitive break with old notions of gender roles even as it conjures an era they see as politically corrupt. And Obama, as an African-American, stands for the shifting power relations in America that come with demographic change.
Trump supporters who chant, “We want our country back!” have in this photograph all the ammunition they need to lament the decline of “real America.”
Two starkly contrasting stories have emerged in these past months, corresponding to different visions of our nation. There’s America as narrated by Republicans: an America broken and in crisis, needing a strongman to fix it. This vision of our nation disavows the embrace of Obama and Clinton, because it disavows what each stand for, and even who they are.
And there’s the America of optimism and activism, which has the mantra “We are stronger together.” Clinton and Obama embracing tells us this story. We will see, come November, which nation will prevail.